A Maryland state senator has crafted a bill to curb the zeal of public school officials who are tempted to suspend students as young as kindergarten for having things — or talking about things, or eating things — that represent guns, but aren’t actually anything like real guns.

...Senate Bill 1058 restricts the disciplinary options Maryland public school officials can use for any student who “brings to school or possesses” an image of a gun or an object that might look like a gun but isn’t one.

Students could also form their fingers in the shape of a gun without fear of reprisal.

The bill also includes a section mandating counseling for school officials who fail to distinguish between guns and things that resemble guns. School officials who fail to make such a distinction more than once would face discipline themselves.

If we weren't utterly convinced that no good can come from the Maryland Assembly, we'd be tempted to opine that this sounds suspiciously like common sense.

Posted by Cassandra at March 11, 2013 06:20 AM

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I'll bet it never passes. Because it requires the school officials to exercise some form of judgement, and the union won't stand for it. Zero tolerance rules exist specifically to protect school officials from having to exercise judgement. And to be fair, it's because if they've got ANY leeway in adjudicating these kinds of things, parents will sue the living dog squeeze out of them if their "special snowflake" carries an Airsoft pistol to school and waves it around, because "they should have known it wasn't real". For those unfamiliar with Airsoft guns they look just like the real thing, but with an orange ring around the end of the barrel:
http://www.hobbytron.com/AirsoftGuns.html?deal=freeship&gclid=CM-6quCa97UCFQSg4AodbUYAjw

And I'm sorry, as a kid, that would have annoyed me, and I'd have removed it or painted it black myself. Point being, yes, some judgement is required so we don't get teachers undies in a knot over semi-automatic assault pastries, but the union won't let their members get punished for "just doing their jobs" regardless of how stupidly they do them.